Items tagged with AOL

AOL has a reputation that precedes it, and that's not necessarily a good thing. When most people think of AOL, they remember the dial-up service from years ago. Heck, some of you reading this might even still have those trial CDs that AOL flooded the market with. But there's more to AOL than that -- much more -- and for that reason, a brand change could be in AOL's future.Verizon owns AOL these days, having acquired the company last year in a deal worth about $4.4 billion. The sum takes into account AOL's various media properties, such as The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Autoblog, Moviefone, Engadget,...Read more...

It appears that Verizon's supercookie is indeed "super", as we're still unable to escape it. Earlier this year, Verizon came under fire for making use of a cookie that works even when offline, and was impossible to disable. After a bit of prodding, the company decided to let users disable it, but not without getting them to jump through some hoops. The reason this "cookie" is so notable is because it can send back a wealth of information to Verizon and its partners. This goes as far as being able to identify which apps you're using on your mobile phone, and where you use them. Simply put,...Read more...

I guess you could say that nothing surprises us anymore. After all, we learned this weekend that AOL’s dial-up business still has over 2 million customers who pay on average just under $21 per month for service. Unbelievable in this day of broadband Internet, right? Regardless of how strange that seems to those of us that salivate over the prospects of gigabit Internet, these folks clinging to 56k modems are adding millions to AOL’s bottom line. But we also have to recall that AOL has a massive digital advertising platform with a heavy focus on the mobile sector. And we also can’t forget AOL owns...Read more...

Remember the terrible sounds your modem used to make when dialing up access to the Internet? In the early days, you had to monitor your minutes online, practice patience as pictures downloaded at a snail's pace, and tolerate trolls who would try to boot you offline with programs called punters. It was a crappy era for the Internet, and for more than 2.1 million people, they're still tolerating some of those headaches. According to AOL's financial results for the first quarter of its fiscal 2015, over 2.1 million people in the U.S. subscribe to its dial-up Internet service. And for the privilege...Read more...

This story is mind-boggling for so many reasons. A $24,000 charge from AT&T? Someone actually pays $51 a month for dial-up access? People actually still use AOL? We must be living in some bizzaro world when things like this are still taking place, but let’s first start from the beginning with 83-year-old Los Angeles resident Ron Dorff. Dorff is a retiree living off a monthly income of roughly $1,500 per month via his Social Security checks. And he inexplicably is paying AT&T $51 for internet access — but this isn’t your garden variety AT&T DSL or U-Verse connection, it’s **gasp** dial-up....Read more...

AOL has gone into restructuring mode and is preparing to lay off staff, as well as shut down several of its prominent website properties. At present, it's being reported that AOL is likely to turn out the lights at its primary gaming site Joystiq, and the The Unofficial Apple Weblog, better known as TUAW. However, several others could also get the axe. TechCrunch, another AOL property, seems to have the skinny on much of what's going on, though contends it's "not privy to what happens at a corporate level." Much of the information it's reporting on has come by way of an anonymous tip, which...Read more...

AOL has experienced a nasty security breach that exposed a great deal of user information, and the company says that it was the work of criminal hackers, as opposed to some kind of glitch or oversight. “AOL is investigating a security incident that involved unauthorized access to AOL's network and systems. AOL is working with best-in-class external forensic experts and federal authorities to investigate this serious criminal activity,” wrote the AOL Mail Team in a blog post. AOL first noticed that there was a problem when users began seeing an increase in spam in the form of spoofed...Read more...

Phew, talk about a close call! Winamp's days of whipping the llama's ass came this close (place your index finger and thumb really close to each other) to being over after AOL decided to pull the plug on the media player it acquired in 1999 for $80 million. AOL announced its intentions in November, saying it would dismantle Winamp five days before Christmas, but has now found a buyer instead. Rumors began to surface days after the announcement that Microsoft was interested in acquiring both Winamp and Shoutcast, the latter of which is a free Internet radio service developed by Nullsoft, the same...Read more...

Today was supposed to be Winamp’s last on earth, but some last-minute nerd heroics may save the beloved music player. The rumor that Microsoft might snag both Winamp and ShoutCast from AOL appears to be legit, as TechCrunch reports that a deal is being finalized as you’re reading this. The site’s source didn’t specify that Microsoft is the potential buyer, but it would make sense considering the previous rumor. While the particulars are being nailed down, it’s likely that Winamp will be left alone in the interest of both parties. Spotiamp Regardless whether or not...Read more...

Unfortunately for llamas everywhere, media player Winamp may not be dead after all. Fortunately for longtime Winamp devotees, that’s because Microsoft may be purchasing Winamp and ShoutCast (a media streaming service, like Winamp also formerly a property of Nullsoft) from AOL. This is just a rumor, but TechCrunch (which is owned by AOL, incidentally) says a source indicates that Microsoft is in talks with AOL to buy Winamp. Why Microsoft would want Winamp is a little unclear, but we wonder if Redmond thinks it can get it for a song, since, you know, AOL was planning on shutting it down anyway....Read more...

Consider yourself lucky if you were raised on broadband and nothing else. For us dinosaurs who were born before the Taylor Swift era, we had to suffer through dial-up service, enduring the barbaric screeches and noises of our modems as they literally dialed up a connection with the Internet. Through a mass marketing campaign in which free trial disks and CDs were handed out everywhere like Halloween candy, America On-Line would emerge as one of the most popular dial-up services of the 1990s, giving us reason to run and buy a swank 56.6K modem, which felt fast at the time. Ah, but with the advent...Read more...

AOL, a company many probably wrote off as dead a few years ago, is actually doing quite well. The company beat expectations and posted revenue of $541.3 million, which is roughly a triple year-over-year improvement on 2012’s second quarter. The company sold about $1.1 billion worth of patents to Microsoft last year. As part of its aggressive strategy to remake itself and continue life in the black, AOL is also planning to acquire Adap.Tv, a video advertising company, for $405 million. (The deal is for $322 million in cash and $83 million in stock.) This acquisition is in line with...Read more...

Go ahead and add another RSS reader to the growing list of Google Reader replacement candidates. As Google prepares to pull the plug on its popular RSS reader, alternatives (both new and old) have come out of the woodwork, one of the newest being AOL Reader, a rather basic option that's now available to the general public in beta form. There's nothing complicated about AOL Reader. It's lightweight and fast, easy to navigate, and makes adding RSS subscriptions a breeze. You can also tweak the layout to your liking with a variety of viewing options. For example, you can organize headlines in a list...Read more...

Patents seemingly make the world go 'round, particularly in the technology space these days. Android, iOS, Samsung, Google, AOL, Microsoft -- hardly a day goes by without someone's patent portfolio making the (positive or negative) news. Today, Microsoft and Facebook are the ones in the spotlight, announcing an agreement under which Microsoft will assign to Facebook the right to purchase a portion of the patent portfolio it recently agreed to acquire from AOL Inc. Those hundreds of patents were purchased in a bulk buy for around $1 billion from AOL, and now Facebook has agreed to pay for the portion...Read more...